Zuma’s headed to parliament for 2017’s first Q&A and the opposition can’t wait

Bathabile Dlamini, Brian Molefe, the SABC, Prasa... so many topics to roast the president on, so little time.

While the majority of ANC MPs will no doubt stick to their traditionally vacuous questions like what South Africa is doing to effect peace in the Middle East – a cardinally important issue, but not one South Africa is even marginally equipped to debate at this point – or who’s going to carve the grave stone of the most recently deceased cousin of a brother of a freedom fighter twice-removed; opposition parties will be taking a much more hard-line approach at Thursday’s first presidential question and answer session for 2017.

Zuma’s meanders to parliament always cause quite a stir and we’re pretty sure this one’s not going to break with tradition. Since the president’s last appearance in the national Assembly, Bathabile Dlamini’s gross incompetence has been laid bare – if you ignore her gross incompetence laid bare in 2016 – for the entire country to see… hell, even the Constitutional Court has had to intervene.

That said, Dlamini’s not the only public figure to have drawn a fair bit of attention. Disgraced former Eskom CEO Brian Molefe has been shoehorned into parliament as an ANC MP, communications minister faith Muthambi’s SABC project has come crashing down and transport minister Dipuo Peters’ hands-off-ish approach to Prasa has meant that she’s had to fire the entire board.

Ok, forgetting about the absolute mess government is currently in, what other points would be within the scope of Jacob Zuma’s abilities to answer? Well, here are a few pressing issues he might be able to comment on:

What is the ANC doing to heal the pretty obvious rift in the Tripartite Alliance?

Will the ANC Youth League be brought to book for making threats against senior party members?

What is government doing about our embarrassing failure to follow the rules in withdrawing from the ICC and will we be taking another crack at it?

How’s that BRICS bank coming on?

What is South Africa doing to take advantage of an increasingly desperate United Kingdom’s search for valuable post-Brexit trade deals?

Stick around on Thursday afternoon for some of the best parts of Zuma’s Q&A session.